{"id":367,"date":"2017-04-22T22:27:59","date_gmt":"2017-04-22T22:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/?p=367"},"modified":"2018-05-09T00:02:05","modified_gmt":"2018-05-09T00:02:05","slug":"santa-fe-part-2-llamas-german-engineering-plane-crashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/2017\/04\/22\/santa-fe-part-2-llamas-german-engineering-plane-crashes\/","title":{"rendered":"LLAMAS, GERMAN APPLIANCES AND A MOVIE QUOTE (Santa Fe, part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

UPDATE<\/strong>: My blogs on\u00a0Santa Fe\u00a0has now turned into a 3-Parter. Spoiler alert: still had pretty rough going\u00a0in Part 2 but\u00a0<\/em><\/span>I can promise you that Part 3 is happy and fun. Stay tuned!\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

When\u00a0last we left things in Part 1, I was curled up on the floor in a foam donut, inside a freezing yurt, bruised and sniveling.<\/p>\n

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Not interested… Interested!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I got up the next morning\u00a0(actually I just\u00a0gave up\u00a0trying to sleep), packed my things, and braved Mt. Compost for the final\u00a0time. But before I left, I wanted to at least see the llamas. Having arrived the night before in pitch black -my host and his wife have a large property outside Santa Fe in the country – I wasn’t sure where the llamas were. After getting Bluebell all packed up, I rounded the yurt – because, well, it’s round – and there they were, the llamas! And they were all staring at me. By the time I got my phone out to take such a “posed”\u00a0picture, a few had gone back to eating or grooming themselves. As I walked up to the fence, a few came to meet\/smell me, and as I walked along the fence of their pen, most of them feigned some interest and then ignored me. But I kid you not, the minute\u00a0I turned my back on any seemingly uninterested llama, they would stare at me. How do I know? Because I would walk past an ignoring llama, wait a second,\u00a0then turn back to look, and\u00a0they would be\u00a0neck straight up, staring at me! I did this more than once, even sneaking\u00a0a selfie as proof. It was hilarious.<\/p>\n

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Sneaked a selfie: Caught you looking!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I finally bid the silly llamas good-bye, let my hosts know I was leaving, and set off for downtown Santa Fe to my new accommodations. My next host met me around 11am to show me the place and it was adorable, with\u00a0beautiful art\u00a0on the walls, and furnished impeccably. My host bid me well, left, and having gotten\u00a0no sleep in the yurt, I went to\u00a0the kitchen to make some much-needed coffee. That’s when I discovered that every appliance in the kitchen was a high-end, German-made, Gagganeau installation and\u00a0extremely<\/em> counterintuitive to use (with no manuals to be found). My attitude started to sour as I got that familiar sinking feeling. But I told myself not to give in\u00a0to it; I would\u00a0simply look up the Gagganeau\u00a0manuals online and go from there. Then the wifi password didn’t work, even after seven times of carefully typing it in. My heart\u00a0sank some more.\u00a0I struggled to buck myself up one more\u00a0time by\u00a0remembering there was a coffee shop a block away which\u00a0would have both wifi and coffee! I went to get my laptop, wallet and keys. But there were no keys. My\u00a0host had not left me the keys to the place\u00a0so I had no way to lock up the house, the house into which I\u00a0had just hauled all my precious belongings. At that point, I sank, defeated, into the nearest chair\u00a0and\u00a0threw myself an enormous pity party. It went something like this:<\/p>\n

\"\"
(L to R) The oven\u00a0is that boxy thing on the far wall and a box\/shelf elevators\u00a0down for you to load your food\u00a0on to bake; \u00a0the espresso maker, built under the cabinets, has no button\/instruction how to open\/pull out to load water\u00a0& coffee beans; underneath is the microwave that literally opens\/functions exactly like a dresser\u00a0drawer, you place your cup in the middle of the drawer\u00a0and push shut hoping not to spill; thankfully, a “regular”\u00a0fridge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“I just want a\u00a0cup of coffee! Ok?!?! A a cup of coffee and a NORMAL POTTY! \u00a0No, a cup of coffee, a REAL BED, and normal potty. No wait, a cup of coffee, a real bed, a WORKING HEATER, and a normal potty! Is that too much to ask!?! Is this not\u00a0the First World!?!?!?!??!!?”<\/p>\n

Yeah… so… when that was over, I\u00a0texted my host about the forgotten key\u00a0and she came immediately\u00a0back. Not only that, she\u00a0brought me a cup of hot coffee, and then she and I spent the next hour or so making\u00a0calls to internet and cable providers to solve the wifi problem (I didn’t even attempt to have her teach me how to use the appliances). By the time the wifi was up, the keys in my hand, and my very apologetic host gone, it was about 3pm, All I\u00a0wanted was a hot shower and a long nap.<\/p>\n

After my shower, I got in my pjs, plopped on the couch, and channel surfed for a movie. But I barely had the TV on when this\u00a0wave of homesickness hit me and I started to cry… again<\/em>. But I’m not talking like\u00a0the previous night’s “I’m-in-a-yurt-with-a-crazy-toilet-and-no-heat” kind of whimpering. I mean full-on, tears streaming down my face and neck, ugly crying. After which I got\u00a0very\u00a0disappointed with\u00a0myself. I mean, c’mon, I’ve been away from home for more\u00a0than 3 weeks before. I’m no longer\u00a0that 6th grader who cried herself to sleep every night at\u00a0Outdoor Ed Camp. I spent 4 years across the country in\u00a0college, coming home only at Christmas and summers! I was an exchange student in Argentina, for pete’s sake, and that required\u00a0a different language and<\/em>\u00a0a different hemisphere! And through all these endeavors, I don’t ever remember getting homesick to the point of crying<\/em>. And yet barely three weeks into my big girl\u00a0road trip, I was crying! I missed\u00a0my dog, missed\u00a0my home\u00a0on Lake Street, missed\u00a0my friends\/coworkers, but\u00a0then realized that even if I were to turn the MINI around\u00a0and head\u00a0home, my life as I knew it, the one\u00a0I felt\u00a0homesick for, no longer existed! And\u00a0when that realization\u00a0hit me, I sank pretty\u00a0low and\u00a0didn’t leave my rental for the next two days. Instead I slept, cried, journaled, and – after Googling German appliance manuals\u00a0– drank many, many espressos.<\/p>\n

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Great place to stay\u00a0in Santa Fe when feeling funky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I won’t go into all the details of this\u00a0dark night of the soul, but it pretty much went in cycles of this: “I have no home! I have no husband or kids! Nothing I’ve done has\u00a0made a\u00a0difference in this world! What the bleep<\/em> am I\u00a0doing out here on\u00a0this road trip anyway!?” Wash, rinse, repeat. \u00a0Yeah, I\u00a0was quite over the top. But I am a deep feeler (a.k.a. drama queen) and I did have some of that “hormonal assistance” we women get\u00a0every month that contributed\u00a0to the drama. But God and I\u00a0managed to pull myself out of my funk by the end of the second day, as I was reminded of a line of dialogue\u00a0from a TV movie I had watched\u00a0recently.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0movie was called “Flight of the Phoenix,” and it was about a plane that crash-landed in the Gobi desert. The captain wanted the survivors to sit tight and wait for rescue as\u00a0the best way to conserve the water they had. But after several days with\u00a0no rescue and the deaths of a few\u00a0who tried to walk out, some of the survivors advocated trying to\u00a0rebuild the plane. The captain was completely against it. One of the guys privately asked the captain why he wouldn’t let them at least try. The captain\u00a0replied, “Because\u00a0I know it won’t fly.” The guy said it didn’t matter. He continued,<\/p>\n

All\u00a0people need in life is something to love.
\nIf\u00a0you can’t give them that, then give them something to hope for.
\nIf you can’t give them that, then give them something to do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When I was deep in my funk the second day, this\u00a0kept coming to mind and heart. I felt like I was wrestling with God to really think about this. So I\u00a0assessed that I didn’t have anyone “to love” (I was single and even away from\u00a0my dog) and I didn’t have anything “to do” (no job contributing to or serving mankind) and it started to feel like I was adding insult to injury.\u00a0But then I heard\u00a0a still small voice ask me, “What, if anything, Gretchen, are you hoping for?”<\/p>\n

When I planned this trip, it wasn’t\u00a0just supposed to be a trip around the country to see historic places\u00a0and visit friends. It was also going\u00a0to be a journey with\u00a0me and God. It would be a\u00a0time to rediscover who I was and know my\u00a0worth away from my job and ministry roles, and also to strengthen\u00a0my faith to meet the growing challenges culture and the future will put on it. And most importantly, at the end of this gap year\/midlife crisis\/walkabout, I would\u00a0hear what the Lord has for me to do and who the Lord has for me to love\u00a0in the next season of my life. So yeah, I needed to be reminded of\u00a0the hope at the core of my original plan. And when I was, I made\u00a0peace with the fact that funky, soul-searching days like the ones\u00a0I’d just had are\u00a0supposed\u00a0to be part of it.<\/p>\n

So the\u00a0answer is yes, there are things I am hoping for: hope that I will<\/span>\u00a0rediscover my worth, I will<\/span> stretch my faith, and I\u00a0will<\/span> hear from the Lord about what’s next for me. So I guess a person doesn’t need something to love or something to do if they have something to\u00a0hope for. Because “we have this hope as an anchor for the soul” (Hebrews 6:19), and hope\u00a0leads\u00a0to everything else.<\/p>\n

Be of good courage and He shall strengthen your heart,
\nall you who hope in the Lord. – Psalm 31:24<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

NEXT UP: Part 3, where I actually get to see Santa Fe!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UPDATE: My blogs on\u00a0Santa Fe\u00a0has now turned into a 3-Parter. Spoiler alert: still had pretty rough going\u00a0in Part 2 but\u00a0I can promise you that Part 3 is happy and fun. Stay tuned!\u00a0 When\u00a0last we left things in Part 1, I was curled up on the floor in a foam donut, inside a freezing yurt, bruised […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-mexico","post_format-post-format-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/storygirlontheroad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/IMG_2441-e1492729762936.jpg?fit=2423%2C1411&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8xsVh-5V","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1110,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/1110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storygirlontheroad.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}